Mike Trout Monday is back for 2018, and more importantly, so is Mike Trout. After enduring arguably the worst offensive game of his entire career on opening day, Trout swiftly calibrated and went 6-for-14 with three doubles and a homer over his next three games. The four-game sample, obviously, is meaninglessly small, but Trout’s OPS for the week and for the season stand at .900, an admirable but sub-Troutian rate.

Here’s the homer:

Presumably you could isolate other four-game stretches in which the same was true, but in the first half-week of the season, Trout swung well more often (50% vs. a career 38.3%) and made more frequent contact than his career norms. He struck out twice in the four games (and got on base anyway on one of them) and has not yet drawn a walk.

Trout’s aggression at the plate and his walk and strikeout rates all seem worth watching in the early part of the year. In every season since 2014, his walk rate has increased and his strikeout rate has dropped, and Trout — for whatever (little) it’s worth — went 44 plate appearances in the Cactus League before he struck out for the first time this spring.

On top of that, the Angels overhauled the lineup around Trout, and it looks as if he’ll mostly hit second between newcomer Zack Cozart and late-August addition Justin Upton in the batting order. If Cozart’s anything like the hitter he was during his breakout offensive campaign last year, it means the Mike Trout sandwich is now regularly being made with much better bread than it was at any point in 2017. And while there’s not a lot of hard evidence to point to any real impact from lineup protection, offense tends to beget offense, and it’s easier to hit with runners on base.

What I’m trying to say is, maybe Mike Trout winds up getting better opportunities to hit this year and taking more rips, and that’d be cool.

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